Thomas Digges and William Pearce: An Example of the Transit of Technology

Abstract

IN the years after I763, while American colonials were perfecting a political revolution in the New World, England was going through an industrial revolution at home. The results of the latter upheaval were already beginning change the face of the Mother Country before its details were known in the former colonies. The works of James Watt, Richard Arkwright, and others, became known Americans only after the war when something like normal communications were re-established with Europe. Bent upon adding economic independence political freedom, American nationalists eagerly sought information concerning the new manufactures. Reports of progress in the mechanic arts greatly excited American projectors. Private correspondence and the public press were full of accounts of various new enterprises, such as the famous steam-powered gristmill at Blackfriars Bridge in London, but it was progress in the textile manufacture that created the most enthusiasm.' Strange as it may appear, affirmed Tench Coxe, they also card, spin, and even weave, it is said, by water in the european manufactories.2 It seemed clear interested Americans that, as Alexander Hamilton put it, to procure all such machines as are known in any part of Europe, can only require a provision and due pains.3 As nearly all of the coveted machines were of English origin, proper provision and due pains meant the circumvention of a whole body of restrictive legislation which had been built up by Parliament since the seventeenth century prevent the exportation of machinery and the expatriation